“I’m not stalling,” I inform her. “I’m trying to determine if I should use the shuricutter or the krislasher.”
“The krislasher without a doubt.” She gives me a look. “Come on now. There’s no contest between the two. The shuricutter is best for—”
“Yes, yes,” I grumble, hating that she saw through my diversion. I’m not stalling. I just…
I don’t know what it is with me lately. I think I’m done here on Kuria. There’s a part of me that isn’t happy here, and I’m beginning to think that I can’t ever find happiness here. Is that because of my father? I wonder if that’s the case. He casts a long shadow, and I’ll never get out from under it.
But where can I find happiness then? Earth? I don’t know about that. Honestly, I think I might want to be a pilot, but my father would never allow that. He’ll want me here, stuck on this red rock for the rest of my life. What I really want is the chance to make my own decisions, whether that’s to go to Earth after all or to seek out other planets. There’s more to the universe than these two planets, even if my father acts as if Kuria is the best place in the entire existence of everything.
He can be a bit pompous.
Then again, if I’m honest with myself, I probably would hate it if I had a son just like me.
I remove my krislasher from inside my boot. “You’re going to watch?”
“Yes, of course,” she says.
“Why do you want me to kill a nealander anyhow?”
“I heard that they are rather tasty.”
“You can get a cook to make you some meat.”
"I hear they're actually best raw," she says impatiently.
“What?”
“Earthlings eat raw fish,” she says.
“Who had the idea to eat nealander raw?”
“You don’t need to ask a bazillion questions. Get on with it!”
“You’re just as pushy as Mom,” I grumble.
“That is not true.” Sarah lifts her head, her long black hair falling behind her shoulders.
“You’re exactly like her!”
“Am not.” Sarah narrows her eyes. “I’m as much like Mom as you are Father.”
Ouch.
Not wanting to hear any more, I slip down the side of the mesa. The nealanders don’t pay me any attention, and I slide into position. There’s at least thirty of them here, and if one of them were to knock me down, all it would take would be one step, and I would be dead.
My breathing slows even though my excitement rises. It’s when I’m doing something like this, something reckless, something my father wouldn’t approve of, that I feel most alive.
This is living—making my own choices and not living out the life dictated for me.
I never realized just how much nealanders smell until now. Ugh. The stench is enough to churn my stomach, and I put my hand under my nose, my krislasher glinting in the sunlight.
A nealander neighs and rears, going up onto two legs and then just one. It nearly topples over and jars into the one beside it. The nealanders start to grow restless, and I creep forward, between them, and slash the throat of one of the ugly beasts.
Dark red blood seeps out from the wound, coating the front of its naked skin. The blood darkens the red stone beneath its hooves, and the nealander collapses.
Slowly, I inch backward until I hit against something.
Another nealander.
I whirl around. The nealander rises onto two legs, and I dash around it before it can knock me down. I’m past the line of the creatures, but they’re turning around, facing me.
And they’re charging.
Ovian!
I rush back to the mesa. Sarah reaches down to haul me up, and it’s all we can do to watch the stampede. They aren’t heading toward the settlement at least, but they’re slamming against the mesa. If they keep doing that…
A lot of the mesas here on Kuria contain water. We’ve been introducing water on the surface, but that’s not native to the planet. Still, if the mesa breaks…
A trickle sounds faintly over the crushing hooves and falling rocks.
“What’s that?” Sarah shouts.
“I think—”
A spray of water gushes out of rocks directly beneath us.
“—they caused the mesa to crack,” I finish grimly.
What’s worse than a stampede?
A flood.
“You’re careless and irresponsible. You never bother to think about anyone other than yourself!” Father is beside himself. He actually pulls on his dark blue hair as he paces.
I’ve never seen Father pace before. Normally, he stares me down with his neon blue eyes. His glower is impressive, and it’s no wonder that none of the Novans have ever thought about taking him on to try to steal the mantle of overlord from him.
“The settlement evacuated,” I say. “No one was hurt.”
“No one was hurt, true, but the damage to their houses! Who is going to repair them? Who is going to take responsibility for this?”
I roll my eyes. “We have builders—”
“And why should they have to redo work that never should have had to be redone in the first place?”
Father's shouting so much that his face is turning an even darker shade of blue. I've noticed from Mom that humans' faces turn red when they're upset, and that makes sense because they have lighter skin than ours, and their blood is red. Well, some of them have lighter skin, a peach color. Some have darker skin, brown or black. They're actually beautiful in their diversity.
But Novans and Kurians both have blue blood. Kurians tend to be a lighter blue shade, but I'm the darkest Kurian there is. That's not too surprising because my father is the darkest blue Novan there is. I can pass for a pure-blooded Novan if one doesn't know our history.
Our blue blood doesn’t change our complexion much except to make us look even bluer when we’re upset, and my father is ovian furious with me.
“If you want me to help the builders—” I start with a sigh.
“I don’t know what I want from you,” Father grumbles.
His tone is one I’ve never heard before, and I
